


Seven Days

by kangeiko



Category: Hebrew Bible
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:24:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moses cried out to the Lord: "O God, please heal her!" . So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



> Thanks to Moebus for the beta.

_I. Pride_

She aches all over, sores and cuts staining her tunic ruddy with every breath. She has not walked for seven days, but peeling off the last three straps of leather across each foot would take more skin than she is willing to surrender. Let them cut them off her corpse, if that is how it is to be; it makes no nevermind to her now. She hears the people pass her; hears them whisper: "see her? See her? Know what she did?"

And what did she do, but the same thing they're doing now, those sharp-tongued gossips? That she, who never had a bad word to say against another, would once _listen_ to them, and say -- for her brother's sake, and not her own -- "no, think on it some more, my dear; mayhap choose another." No words of accusation passed her lips, no harsh thought or unclean thing. _She did no evil thing_, and she wants that to be hung around her neck. Truth for a mill-stone, that one, and she'd rather wear it than bear the endless comments from those who whispered in _her_ ear once upon a time, and said: "no, Miriam, she's not for him; she's foul and unclean and _Cushite_, Miriam, dear. She's not for him. You'll tell your brother, won't you? Won't you, dear?"

And Miriam, a mere sister, no brother or mother she, held her head high.

_II. Envy_

So here is her punishment: skin sloughed off around her on the mat, snake-like and foul, and an attendant who will not cross the threshold. And her two brothers, both tall and fine of form, that she took with these poor hands from her mother's womb. Such blessings on her house, those people said. Such fine sons!

That it was she who cut the cord and wrapped them in her skirts, they do not mention.

Aaron was the first, and she a mere child herself so terrified of dropping him that she began to cry when the midwife bade her take him. "Look, Miriam," she said, while her mother gasped and sobbed against the bed, "look at your little brother."

And she looked, damn her. She looked into that red, squashed face, more demon than human, and loved the little nightmare and coddled him and pressed him to her breast. "Aaron, my Aaron," she sang to him, and imagined him hers.

_III. Lust_

When he was little, he shared her bed more often than their mother's. Their father still ached to keep their mother's side, and so the baby came to Miriam's arms and stayed there every night, cleaving to her with sour milk and sweet honey on his breath.

She was too little to recognise the feeling then, the swell and lull of her brother's sleeping chest, and her own watchfulness over his dreams. All she remembers is the echo of that babyhood; the sun-spun smell of him.

She's always loved him best.

_ IV. Sloth_

Her other love -- the lesser love, the one that is not her mother's firstborn son -- she loves as well she can those short few days she has him. That one she delivers by herself, so well-versed in childbirth she brings him out in a few short hours. It is curious to see this difference: how there is no ache in her, no need to take him to herself and teach him her name and her scent. She feels a curious lethargy, an unwillingness to give up so much of herself again for something not hers.

She places him on her mother's breast, and watches him turn to suckle, happy and sated and not the least bit covetous. She does not need another child.

_V. Greed_

He was still milk-wet, that newborn, when she placed him among the reeds. She wrapped her best cloth around him, and smeared honey on his lips to soothe him as she waited, the perfect sister: silent, obedient, resourceful, irrelevant. She is there to watch him drift away, to watch him be lifted and taken into some other home (some other life) and say nothing.

She wonders if God would have been better to have that baby stolen in the night. No need for a sister then; not at all. Just some stranger's hands to carry him away, that selfish, careless boy.

She cannot help herself: she kisses his brow as she leaves him, and smoothes his frown away. "You can be mine, too, if you want," she whispers, in those few hours before he is taken away.

_VI. Gluttony_

And, still - a midwife and respected sister, a matriarch to all - _still_ her feet ache and her hands bleed, her skin like a flayed thing against her. And the people look at her, and wonder if she laid down with an unclean thing, or touched a leper, or prayed to false idols on some distant shore. They _pity_ her, the poor, helpless wretch, so dependent on the mercy of strangers.

I'll ask him, her brother says to her. Dear, sweet Aaron, unafraid to touch his strong clear hands to hers. He is the one to bring her water, and press a washcloth to her brow, and find a woman willing to braid her blood-soaked hair. He is the one to bring her food and press it to her lips, hands sticky with bread and honey. She eats like a famished thing, sucking his fingers clean, her appetite endless.

I will ask him, he says to her. His hand over her heart. He is my brother. He will not refuse me.

_VII. Wrath_

It took five words and seven days.

She wishes she had drowned the little viper when she had the chance.

* * *

fin


End file.
